Better Times Than These (52 page)

They were cruising on a newly paved road toward a guard-post entrance to the air base. Dozens of tin-roofed buildings lined both sides of the road, and a multitude of aircraft occupied the runway—jet fighters, propeller-driven fighters, helicopters, light observation planes, big transports.

“Go on,” Gore said.

“Well, I think I said something like, ah, ‘How do you know what Lieutenant Brill told me?’ and he said, ‘Because I heard what he’s been saying.’ And I said, ‘What’s that?’ and he gave me the story Brill had told me that first night.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I said that if that wasn’t the truth, then what was? And he said the lieutenant killed the girls and that some other men had raped and hurt them earlier. Then I asked who these men were, and he sort of stumbled around and wouldn’t tell me, so I told him I’d look into it and to go back to his unit.”

“And that was the last you heard of him?”

“Yes—well, until when the chopper came in, just about dusk. We were always sending people back and forth to the rear, and I had a rule that anyone who wanted to go in for anything had to clear it with me personally, or with the First Sergeant. The chopper had already left, and the First Sergeant came up with a list of three or four people he’d okayed to go back to Monkey Mountain. One of them was this guy. He’d told the First Sergeant he wanted to see the Chaplain.”

“Did he say what about? Didn’t it surprise you?” Gore said.

“Not really. I’d had some problems with him before—not problems, exactly; he had trouble adjusting. He’d asked to see the Chaplain a few times before this.”

“What was the man’s name?” Gore asked.

“Miter,” Kahn said. “His father is a Congressman.”

“I know,” said Gore.

They passed through the gate to the air base, and the privates dropped them off in front of the officers’ club, a large white building with glass windows looking westward over the rice fields to a chain of bluish mountains. The first thing Kahn noticed was cold air on his face and hands. Air conditioning, he marveled—they had air conditioning here.

The varnished wood bar was lined with loud, drinking Air Force and Army officers, many of them high-ranking. Outside, on a large roof-covered patio, a mob of eager officers had gathered around a small stage to watch a blond stripper perform. Gore and Kahn ordered drinks at the bar and found an empty table in a corner.

“Australian,” Gore said authoritatively of the stripper. “They’re the best-looking ones. The ones the USO sends all look like they just got deported from Lower Slobbovia.” So far, the girl had removed none of her clothes. She was young and pretty, and Kahn regarded her wistfully.

“Let’s talk about what you said to the investigating officer,” Gore said. “When did he come out?”

“It was the next morning—two days after the, ah . . . killings. The morning after Miter went to see the Chaplain. He showed up at the CP and looked me up.”

“What did he say?”

“That he was there to investigate a report of nonbattle deaths of two civilian women, and I said, ‘Well, I guess I knew you were going to come sooner or later.’ Then I said, ‘They weren’t civilians; they were VC.’ ”

“How did he react?”

“He said it ‘remained to be seen,’ or something like that.”

Gore waited for him to continue.

“We went into my tent and sat down, and he said this was an ‘official investigation’ and that I was under oath, and he took out a pad to write on and started asking questions.

“First he asked me if I was aware the girls had been raped and molested, as he put it, before they died, and I told him I really was not aware of that.

“Then he asked if I knew exactly how they died, and I told him I understood that there was another, male prisoner and that he had gotten loose and managed to shoot them. Then he said did anyone tell me a story to the contrary, and I said I thought I might have heard something to that effect but I wasn’t sure.”

Gore took a long swallow from his drink and waited.

“Well, then he said, ‘Did you investigate this incident and make a report?’ and I said, I did make a report. He said, ‘To whom?’ and I said to the Battalion Commander, and told him about the conversation the morning when the colonel came to the CP. He asked was that the only report I made and I told him it was.

“He wrote it all down and said he was going to question some of the other men and named their names, and he asked me to tell him where to find them. He said he was going to get back to me later, but he never did. The next thing I knew—and that was late that next afternoon, after he left—I got a message from Battalion to get my ass on the next chopper to Monkey Mountain and report to the Chief of Staff, and when I got there he said I was relieved of command pending an investigation and possible court-martial.”

“All right,” Gore said. “Now, don’t take offense at what I’m going to ask you. As your counsel I need to know the truth. When the investigating officer asked if you were aware that the girls had been raped and molested, you answered you were not, and that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yes, I suppose it was,” Kahn said. “I really wasn’t ‘aware’ of it, because I hadn’t seen it. But Brill told me they’d been ‘messed with,’ and then Miter clinched it, and I guess I pretty much knew it, or at least suspected it.”

“And when he asked if you knew how they died and you gave him Brill’s story, you suspected then that that was not the truth, correct?”

“I suppose I did—all right, yes I did, but it wasn’t an out-and-out lie. I told him what I had heard from one of my officers.”

“But it was a prevarication, wasn’t it?” Gore said.

“Yes, it was that, but not a lie, except . . . Oh hell,” Kahn said, “sure I knew it was a lie.” He stared at his drink and stirred the ice with his fingers. “I know I’m sunk,” he said miserably. “Why don’t I just plead guilty and take what’s coming to me?”

“Nonsense,” Gore said, “that’s exactly what they expect you to do. It’ll follow you around the rest of your life—dismissed from the service and all that. There’s no such thing as throwing yourself on the mercy of this court—they’ll be hand-picked by the general himself, so you may as well make them sweat for it. Besides, like I told you before, I’m a pretty damned good lawyer.” Gore smiled. “Let’s have another drink up at the bar.”

They bellied up to an empty spot where they could see the stripper through the glass picture window. She had gotten down to a G-string and pasties and was teasing the men in front with bumps and grinds. A large crowd had gathered, and some in back were standing on chairs to get a better view. All were hooting and laughing.

“We start in the morning at oh eight hundred,” Gore said casually. “You may as well sit in and try to pick up something from the testimony—it might help you.”

Kahn looked extremely surprised. “You mean they’ll let me listen?” he asked.

“Can’t stop you. This isn’t your show yet. They’ll get to you when we’re finished with the enlisted men.”

There was a sudden commotion outside on the patio. All heads that had been watching the stripper were now turned to a bunch of men clustered about a prostrate form in the center of the crowd, next to a large table. Gore and Kahn couldn’t see what was going on, but the stripper kept up her gyrations, and had removed both pasties by now and thrown them to the audience.

“Happens every time,” groaned a crusty Air Force major standing beside them at the bar. “Some damned fool always decides to stand up on that table for a better look and gets his head caught in the fan.”

They finished their drinks, and Gore walked Kahn to the door.

“Sure you don’t want to stay for supper here?” he said. “Chow’s pretty good—it’s Air Force.”

“Thanks anyway,” Kahn said, “but I told somebody I’d meet them back at my hotel. By the way, I don’t have anything but fatigues to wear—didn’t have time to dig out my khakis before I left.”

“You’re better off without them,” Gore said. “Like I told you, we’re not going to make any speeches about your being a field soldier, but it’s little things like that that’ll let them know.”

There was an Army truck that served as a shuttle between the air base and the city, and Kahn caught a ride back on it. From the drop-off point he walked five or six blocks down quiet side streets and up the hill where the hotel was.

Since no one had specified where he was to stay, he found out about a small French hotel, the Maison Dupont, and after the deprivations of The Tit, he figured it would be money well spent—the more so since his fate after the court-martial was in considerable doubt.

In his room, Kahn stripped down and stood under the old-style bowl shower in a corner of the room, letting the tepid, sun-heated water drain over his head and shoulders. After a while he stepped out onto the tile floor, dried and wrapped the towel around his waist and walked to the louvered doors that opened onto a long covered portico overlooking the shimmering Bay of Nha Trang and the great green-hued mountains that marked the entrance to its harbor. He stood for quite a long while, thinking about what was really going on out there, deep in the vaporous jungles and mountains, and in the little villages at night: murder, pain, treachery—and for what? Capitalism? Communism? Chauvinism? Jingoism? Or some other ism nobody but Political Science professors understood?

There had been a time he thought he knew.

When they were piping across the Dismal Deeps of the big Pacific ocean, once then, during the boxing matches on deck, he had watched old Crump take his beating, take the blond boy’s best shots, then rally and bear in on him. Lean and mean American Crump, sailing into battle, flags flying, banner raised . . . He had seen it all so clearly then, and it had been almost grand.

At a quarter past seven he dressed and walked through the hotel to the veranda, where a dozen or so guests, mostly American or European, were seated at tables for drinks or dinner. The sun had dropped behind the mountains, and a dark mass of rain clouds was gathering on the western horizon. There was a little outdoor bar with four stools, and seated at one of them, in baggy seersucker pants and a Hawaiian shirt, was Major Dunn.

“Hello there, young man,” Dunn said, grinning cheerfully. “What’ll you have?”

“Hi, Major—Scotch and soda, I guess,” Kahn said.

The Vietnamese behind the bar smiled apologetically. “Sorry, sir, we have no Scotch whiskey. A brandy maybe?”

“Yeah, all right—with soda water,” Kahn said. “Been here long, Major?”

“Not at all, just half a drink. God, it’s pretty here, almost like Hong Kong. Bill, you wouldn’t believe that place . . . The girls there—oooooh, boy!”

“When do you have to be back in your cage?”

“First flight in the morning—so I ain’t through yet.”

For the next ten minutes the major gave Kahn a blow-by-blow account of Hong Kong delights.

“I’ve never done anything like that in my life,” Dunn said wonderingly, “even before I was married . . . I don’t suppose I told you—I’m divorcing her. Right out of the picture . . .”

They took the drinks to a small table. The menu described in both French and English several types of fresh fish, lobster and cold soups and salads.

“So tell me, what are you doing down here?” Dunn said. “I didn’t quite understand what you said before. You’re not transferred, are you?”

“Not exactly,” Kahn said. He took a deep breath and told Dunn the story. They were midway through the main course of dinner when he finished.

“Oh, boy, oh, boy,” Dunn said, shaking his head sympathetically. “You do what you think is right and then get screwed over for it. Whew!”

“I don’t know about that, Major,” Kahn said ruefully. “I’m afraid . . .” His voice trailed off. “The way it looks now, it was one of the dumbest things I’ve done in my dumb young life.”

After dinner the major tried to persuade Kahn to join him for a night of Oriental pleasures in the town, but Kahn begged off. Sitting alone, he finished a cup of coffee, then strolled over to the outdoor bar, where a tanned balding man in white shirt and black trousers was having a Pernod and smoking a Gauloise cigarette.

“Glass of brandy and soda please,” Kahn said. “Yes, sir,” said the bartender, smiling . . . They always smiled that same smile, all of them—shopkeepers, farmers, cyclo-boys, soldiers, old women, children—as though they knew something you didn’t know. And, he thought, they probably did.

It had been painful to tell Dunn. Almost more for Dunn’s sake than his own, because halfway through, there was a haunted, heart-wrenched understanding in the major’s face as he ran through the memories of his own little horror: that split-second decision—careless, stupid—that didn’t seem so at the time; then, whammo! . . .

Kahn took a deep swallow of brandy and looked out toward the bay. Below, the city lights were beginning to come alive, misty spots of brightness in the twilight.

. . . He should have known, damn it! No matter what he’d thought at the time, there was always The Book, and if he had gone by it he wouldn’t be in this fix. All of his life he had gone by The Book—some Book or other. Because The Book was The Word, and The Word was all set out there in The Book—the right and wrong, and punishments for those who disobeyed. The Book did not care if those men had become so brutalized they probably hadn’t even known what they did was wrong—or not very wrong, anyway. It didn’t give a hoot if he felt a certain protectiveness toward them because
he
understood it—if that was what he really
had
felt. Nor was The Book interested that the two dead girls had probably spent the day before they died tying fuses to mines that would wreck the lives and limbs of the very men who had savaged them.

The Book was not concerned with these things.

The Book was his enemy now. Not the general, or the officers on the court, or Patch—they didn’t give a good goddamn about those girls. And no matter the killing and carnage and terror and frustration and the living like swine . . . The Book had to be followed, because without it, it would only be worse, and he had not followed it, and now he was going to be convicted because that was what The Book said. And there was a Book . . .